Texas bank welcomes customers packing heat

A small-town Texas bank has become the nation’s first to welcome legally concealed handguns, KHOU-TV reports.

“You never know who’s sitting in this bank,” said Ed Smith, president of the Chappell Hill Bank. “If you’re coming in to rob it, I think you’re going to be in a world of hurt.”

He suggested that allowing guns in the bank has been an effective deterrent.

“We’ve been robbed five times (before the policy change),” Smith told the station. “All of them by Yankees.”

But the bank hasn’t been robbed a sixth time, he said.

“Everybody wants the government to do something,” Smith said. “People need to do things for themselves.”

He and others in Chappell Hill, just east of Brenham, say they aren’t big fans of the Obama administration’s push for more gun control in the wake of the Newtown, Conn., school shootings.

“I think every bank should allow conceal carry. I think every school should allow it. Everybody who carries is more for fixing the problem than … what they’re proposing in Washington,” resident Peron Einkauf told the station.

“People down here have a mindset about taking care of themselves,” Smith said. “If we have a flood, I don’t think you’re going to see people sitting in water up to their knees waiting for FEMA to come help them.”